EVALUATION FORMS ARE IMPORTANT FOR EVERY BUSINESS OR ORGANIZATION

Evaluation forms are used to indicate quality of performance or progress in certain areas. You can use evaluation forms to evaluate yourself, employees, employers or instructors. They are often used to determine areas that need improvement and to develop methods and strategies for improvement. If you follow a few simple steps, evaluation forms are not difficult to write.

Evaluation forms can be great sources of feedback as well as effective marketing tools. The best type of evaluation forms are ones you make yourself. You can tailor the questions to fit your presentation and provide spaces for names and e-mails that you can use for your marketing efforts.

Evaluation forms can be great sources of feedback as well as effective marketing tools. The best type of evaluation forms are ones you make yourself. You can tailor the questions to fit your presentation and provide spaces for names and e-mails that you can use for your marketing efforts.

CREATING AN EFFECTIVE EVALUATION FORM

An ideal evaluation form should be short, encourage honest feedback, and provide room for written comments. Give the responders the option of either keeping their comments anonymous or providing their name and contact information. The form should be limited to one side of letter-sized paper at most. A half sheet would be better.

The "on a scale of 1 to 5" type of questions are popular on evaluation forms because they enable responders to provide useful feedback quickly. When writing this type of survey, make sure that the scale is clearly labeled and the questions fit the responses. You can use numbers with the highest number as best and the lowest as worse, or you can label each of your possible responses. Provide enough responses so that you can get a clear picture of how the audience rates your presentation, but not so many that responders have to stop and ponder which box to check. A range of five options is usually sufficient.

Training evaluation focuses on how effective the trainer was in designing and delivering the training, rather than on content acquisition by the trainee. Here are ten basic principles that can help you create an evaluation form that gives you useful information, followed by two samples:

Top Ten Evaluation Principles to Follow

Keep the evaluation short – no more than one page, no more than five minutes to complete.

Tie your questions to the objectives of the training, asking about both whether they understood the material presented and whether they feel they can apply the material.

Ask only about things you could or would change – e.g., different sequencing of material, different length of session, different venue. For example, if the training will never be in this location again or if it has to be delivered in this location, then there is no point in wasting the trainee’s time asking about the location.

Use primarily “close ended” questions – i.e., questions where they choose from response options – as these are the easiest and quickest to complete and also the easiest to score.

For “close ended” questions, have a minimum of three and a maximum of five response options. Giving only two response options (Yes/No) triggers a judgmental right/wrong mind set instead of a more open evaluative mind set. Giving more than five response options is confusing and distracting as most people have trouble making that fine a differentiation and so the data you get is of poor quality.

Include a question about the action they are willing to take – e.g., recommending the training to others – as this is the best single measure of customer satisfaction.

Ask at least one “open ended” question to allow them to provide specific feedback.

Make completing the evaluation the last part of the training, leaving sufficient time after you have “closed,” so that they do not have to take their own time to help you.

In distributing the evaluation forms, make sure they understand that you want their honest feedback as it will help you know what to keep the same and what to modify in order to provide effective training.

Make sure that the evaluation forms are anonymous so that the trainees feel they can be honest without hurting your feelings. This includes having a way to turn them in (e.g., put them in a box, put them face down on a table, submit them online without their return email address being apparent) that is anonymous.

Using Evaluation Forms for Marketing

The most important part of the form from a marketing standpoint is the place where responders can provide their name and contact information. But providing this information must be optional. Responders want to be able to respond anonymously. One option is to put spaces for the name and contact information on a tear-off portion of the evaluation form or on a separate sheet of paper. This enables people to provide their name and contact information and still respond anonymously. If responders do provide their name and contact information, you should still ask for their permission to send them material.

How to Use the Feedback from Evaluation Forms

Evaluation forms are gold mines of information that will enrich your speaking skills. Here are some tips that will help you use feedback to improve your future presentations:

Do the math. Count up how many of each response you receive. Did you mostly get fives or threes? Calculate the average score for each questions. This will help you determine how the audience ranked you overall.

Look for trends in the written responses. What questions did your listeners ask the most? What things did they like about the presentation? What did they dislike? This will help you focus on where you can improve your presentation.

Reflect on your presentation. Use the responses to help you remember how your presentation went and where you might have had difficulties. If the audience said they couldn’t hear you clearly, was there a problem with the audio equipment? Did you speak clearly?

Follow up. Contact audience members if you need clarification or more detail about their comments. This is also an opportunity to build good relations with your customers.

Use the feedback to improve your evaluation forms. Are you not getting useful responses? Fine tune your questions and the scale of responses. Are people skipping the written responses? Make your questions clearer and more focused. Are people not filling out the form at all? Shorten it and make the questions simpler.

Always be grateful for feedback, positive or negative. Don’t take it personally and don’t get defensive. Feedback is a tool you can use to improve.

Evaluation forms are a powerful tool that will help you improve your skills and business as a speaker.

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Evaluation forms can be great sources of feedback as well as effective marketing tools.